“What love-work isn’t grief-work?” - Krista Dragomer

My mother keeps her voice from breaking when she informs me of Nanu’s diagnosis. It is a late October morning in 2022. I call in sick and take the bus to Fletcher Moss. Runners and cyclists zoom past me. Children are on their way to school, some laughing and others grumbling. Trees let go of leaves.

I watch, half-glazed, as the world around me carries on even when it has stopped making sense to me. A small, silent rage spills out of me. I find a spot near River Mersey and cry. I don’t know if the tears will stop. I think about the many Tuesday evenings spent at the Buddhist Centre, sitting cross-legged and returning my attention to the breath. Reminding myself that impermanence is only thing I can believe in, that death is a part of life. Nobody is immune to loss. The knowledge I had accumulated over many months of meditation practice feels futile, almost irrelevant. To know something is vastly different from living it.

I don’t remember how I mustered the strength to put one foot in front of the other, drag myself to the bus stop and get on the 142 headed to the Picadilly. What I do remember was that in the ache of that moment, when it felt unjust to see the world carrying on, my co-passenger nudged me to look outside the window. The sky blazing in orange flames. Gaping in awe, she whispers: “Isn’t that the most gorgeous sunset, love?”

To share that moment with a stranger, in the midst of ancticipatory grief, was the world trying to save me.

*

Eight months later, when I packed my big life into a small suitcase and moved back to the city I grew up in, Nanu was awake at 3 am to welcome me home. He was watching The World Is Not Enough. Despite my exhaustion, I laughed. After a long embrace, he asked: “I’ve cut mangoes for you.”

I could feel my tears rising. That one gesture flooded open the gates of nostalgia. I recalled the first week of April, when the three of us (Me, Ma, and Didi) would travel to Hyderabad to spend the summer holidays there. Nanu waited for us at Kacheguda railway station. The ride home was filled with excitement for the first crop of mango, cut with care, ready for us to devour them. That night, as we ate mangoes at 3 am, I tasted my childhood again. My body had forgotten what that felt like to arrive at another home, even as I’d left one behind.

*

7^th October 2024. 6.18pm IST. The moment when Nanu departed this realm. When my phone flashed, a call from my mother, I felt dread rise in me. Her voice broke. You can read several books and articles about mortality, you can listen to all the podcasts about grief and loss, you can meditate on impermanence. But nothing can prepare you for this moment.

I don’t know how I mustered the strength to make my way to Manipal Hospital, to drag my feet up six flights of stairs to the ICU. What I do remember was that in the ache of that moment, when it felt unjust to see the world carrying on as if my loss didn’t matter, when the tears wouldn’t stop, my cab driver offered me his bottle of water. In a soft voice, he said: “Apna khayal rakhna, madam.” (Take care of yourself).

To share that brief moment with a stranger, in the midst of my world crumbling at my feet, was the world trying to save me.

*

Nanu’s life brimmed with love and vitality. He spoke four languages, including Japanese. He watched James Bond more times than any of us could count. When I gave up meat and dairy, he was curious about my choice and wanted to learn more about the animal agriculture industry. He disagreed with some of my political beliefs but never dismissed them. He began each day with prayer. When Nani fell into depressive episodes, he would hold her hand and narrate stories. He was a captiavting storyteller. His favourite food was pan-fried gyoza, second favourite: was Paradise Biryani. The first love of his life was a Yashica camera. He loved captured streets, people, the more-than-human world. He added tabasco to every dish. When I moved in with him in June 2023, he would wait for me to return from my run each morning. We’d sit together, in silence, reading.

He lived a full, expansive life. I celebrate him and I feel the pain of his physical absence.

*

In a writing workshop last month, I half-joked about incoherence being my new methodology. I can’t think or write coherently these days. And yet when I look back at the seemingly incoherent scribbles in my journal, I see a pattern of documenting moments when the world has kept trying to save me.

There were messages from friends, “Thinking of you as I eat lots of broccoli”, “Can I come home and meet you, just for five moments” “Look at this picture of sloths!”. Yogi, who licked my face and put his tiny furry head on my lap to comfort me as my partner and I were packing his things into suitcases and boxes. The dark green butterfly perched on Nanu’s study table the night we returned home from the hospital. There were the flowers — so many of them in vibrant colours — that brought my attention to what was in front of me. My partner, who held me with tenderness and care, as I struggled to sleep most nights. Poetry. Richard Powers’ Playground. There was my trainer who gently nudged me to move at a pace that honoured my body’s needs. Sunshine, glorious, glorious sunshine after tiresome nights. There was Ruta who reminded me that I don’t have to ‘heal’ to be able to write again. That my responsibility is to offer my truth even amidst all this grief-work. Even amidst all this love-work.

*

Francis Weller writes of grief: “There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. Through this, I have come to have a lasting faith in grief.”

Somehow, all I do these days is cry. I want to ‘fix’ this. I want to make something out of this, I urge my therapist. Give me a manual on how to navigate this loss. Give me a prescription or an answer or a routine. Give me a framework to make sense of it. Give me a coping mechanism.

Much to my exasperation, she invites me to stay with/in the wilderness of grief. To experience the helplessness, the loneliness, the fear of will I survive this? To relinquish the attempt to make something out of it. To let go of the urgency to say something about grief, to transform it into art, into something of ‘worth.’ To make the unbearable bearable.

Can I accompany grief instead? Can I tend to it? Can I let the tears flow through me without feeling ashamed or apologetic? What if I didn’t expect to move on from grief, no less than I would expect to move on from love? What grief-work isn’t love-work?

Can I place my faith in grief, trusting that the world is trying to save me?